In a wireless communications system, there is typically a fixed amount of bandwidth available for communications. As more and more individuals start to utilize wireless services and as service providers continue to offer new and varied wireless services, the demand and competition for those limited resources continues to increase. Therefore, there is a need for new and inventive methods and apparatus to boost system capacity.
In a multi cell cellular system, alot of approaches have been proposed to mitigate the inter-cell interference and boost system capacity. However there are problems associated with these proposed approaches. For example, spatial multiple input multiple output (MIMO) techniques need inter-element spacing which is a problem in ever shrinking mobile devices. Another problem with spatial MIMO techniques is that in a rank deficient scattering environment spatial MIMO does not prove to be very effective.
The interference between a vertically polarized antenna and a horizontally polarized antenna is typically very small as compared with interference resulting due to spatial antenna arrays. Two differently polarized antennas can create two parallel channels similar to two channels using different frequency bands. It would be beneficial if methods and apparatus were developed which exploited these attributes associated with using different polarized antennas.
In view of the above discussion, it would be desirable if improved methods and apparatus could be developed to mitigate the inter-cell interference and/or increase the system capacity.